I've still got a few plastic bins filled with old gen 1-2 cards and the collectable cards (with the puzzle pieces/pictures on the back). I don't collect the cards anymore. I actually switched from Pokemon to YuGiOh back when it first came out. Most tournament I went to for that were strict in the same way at times. There was one where we could only use cards from certain packs alone. I loved how they gave us a pack for entry and then per round we won though.